Tip #821 - XP Disaster Recovery
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XP Disaster Recovery
Microsoft says “XP” stands for eXPerience. I recently discovered it stands
for eXPlode.
Here's what happened: I installed some new software on my XP machine. It told
me to re-boot the computer, so, like I good little geek I yelled “Affirmative!” and
promptly re-booted.
At which point, XP would try to boot, get to some kind of blue screen chock
full of error messages, and re-boot again. About the 22nd time this happened,
it occurred to me that I might want to try booting into Safe mode.
So, I hit my F8 key just as Windows started to boot, selected Safe Mode from
the little menu and watched my computer go into another continuous re-boot
cycle.
This was getting serious, so I donned my propeller cap and started to think
(OK, I really don't have a propeller hat).
It was then I remembered there were a few more options when I hit my F8 key
during boot-up. So, I decided to give that another go and noticed an option
for re-booting using the last known good configuration.
And it actually worked!
Needless to say, as soon as Windows was back up and running I removed the
offending program.
The moral of the story? I need to get me a propeller hat. Oh, and if you ever
run into a similar situation, hit the F8 key just as Windows starts to boot
and exercise the “last known good configuration” option. It may just save your
computer!
~ Steve
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